WASHINGTON- Barack Obama supporters, Barack Obama, John McCain supporters, and John McCain took turns bemoaning the fact that the New Yorker plans a July 21st cover depicting the assumptive Democratic nominee and his wife as gun-toting Arab terrorists with an American flag burning in their fireplace.

"Americans are stupid enough to take the cover lampoon seriously," said Obama spokesman Bill Burton. "When you are dealing with bitter inbred rednecks who are into God and guns, you can never be too careful. You just never know when one will decide to kill an Arab for Jesus. At the very least, this cover puts every convenience store clerk in middle America in danger."

"This is over the top," agreed Tucker Bounds, spokesman for the McCain campaign. "Depicting Barack Hussein Obama as a potentially dangerous terrorist is absolutely disgusting. If they'd put him in a dress supporting gay marriage, maybe that would have been appropriate. I can see portraying him as light-loafered sissy boy, but there's no need to go as far as they've gone."

U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings was appalled. "Many states do not have the concept of irony in their curriculums until the senior year of high school," she said. "Most of them do not grasp the concept then. How can you expect someone who cannot find Iowa on a map to properly interpret a magazine cover showing such outrageous nincompoopery? The press needs to show some responsibility here."

"I fully support Barack Obama in his efforts to be President even though most of his supporters are exactly the type of pseudo-intellectual elitist puffballs who read the New Yorker," said Hillary Clinton. "Real Americans who see the cover on newsstands will either nod sagely as they pass by or ignore it completely.

Vice President Dick Cheney was unavailable for comment.